The Chocolate Run (23 page)

I continued to study my reflection. My hair had started to grow at an alarming rate – when I’d started this thing with Greg, it’d been just below my cheekbones, now it was almost touching my chin. My formerly oval face had thinned down a little – there was definition in the contours of my face, particularly around my cheeks. My neck was shapely, slender, even. My shoulders were still quite broad because I was built like that, but you could see definition too. My breasts, my stomach, my thighs, my calves . . . I was all right, wasn’t I? Curvaceous, mainly because of my rather generous helping in the breast department.
I’m all right, aren’t I?
Curvy, contoured, shapely, round, fat, rotund, obese.

STOP IT!
a voice screamed in my head.
Stop it, stop it, stop it! You’re being insane.

‘You see, I think the thing is,’ Jen was saying, while I was eyeing myself up with new horror.

Have I let myself go? Do I look awful in everything?
I’d bought some new gear recently. I owned three more skirts that weren’t for work. I had some nicely cut jersey tops. A pair of quite smart black, flared trousers.

Do I look awful in them? Is Greg wishing I’d drop a few more pounds? Do Martha and Renée wonder how I dare show my face in public?

‘I think Greg’s in love with me,’ Jen’s voice said as it pierced my self-assessment.

I swung to look at her. ‘What?’

‘Greg. I think he’s in love with me. That’s why he reacted so oddly to the news about Matt moving in with me. And why he’s avoiding us now.’

I couldn’t stop a laugh escaping my lips. ‘Yeah, that’ll be it,’ I scoffed. ‘Greg’s in love with you, his best friend’s girlfriend. Of course.’

Jen stopped admiring her diminished body in the mirror and looked at me with a half-piteous, half-patronising smile on her face. She turned back to the mirror then tossed her hair model-in-front-of-mirror style. She smoothed down creases in her dress, twisting slightly to check out the bones formerly known as her hips, now they were covered in pink and purple chiffon. ‘So why did he make a pass at me?’

Whoa! That was an earthquake. Probably 9.9 on the Richter Scale. Or maybe it was the Earth shifting on its axis. Or maybe it was the hells opening up and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding towards me at speed to laugh at me. ‘Ha-ha!’ they guffawed as they pointed their bony fingers at me. ‘You thought you were the one Greg wanted.’

‘Oh, I didn’t tell you about that?’ Jen said, clocking my face – contorted as it was in horror and shock – in the mirror.

My knees, my supposedly fat-bearing knees, buckled. I leant against the nearest mirror to stop myself keeling over. I folded my arms across my body to hide how much I was shaking.
Let’s see, did my best mate tell me that the man who would become my boyfriend made a pass at her behind her boyfriend, his best friend’s, back? Erm, nope. Can’t say that vital bit of information was, at any point, imparted into my brain
. ‘What happened?’ I asked, my voice as shaky as my knees.

‘Oh, it was silly really,’ Jen said, taking off the dress and reaching for another slip of material masquerading as clothing. ‘Eight, no, nine months ago, you know, when Matt went away to Paris for a whole month Greg came round. He said it was to return a CD and video of mine that Matt had lent him.’ Jen smirked. ‘Like I missed them. Anyway, he asked if he could have a beer and, about an hour later, we were sat on the floor watching TV and we were both pissed and Greg tried to kiss me. I laughed it off. He left not long after that.’

A shower of ice-cold recognition cascaded down on me. That was how Greg had seduced me. Lame excuse to come round . . . Sitting on the floor chatting . . . Kiss . . . Except Jen hadn’t been stupid enough to sleep with him. And, thinking about it now, when he’d been saying all those complimentary things about me the day Matt moved in, his eyes had been fixed on Jen. Oh. My. God. He was going out with me because he wanted Jen and I was the booby prize. I was the big fat booby prize.

‘Ha-ha!’ the Horsemen of the Apocalypse intoned.

How could Greg do this to me? Who had he called from the police station? Who had he come to when he’d been attacked with a knife? Who risked her job to get him out of a hotel room? Who’d held his hand during the HIV test?

I would’ve understood if he told me about Jen. All right, I wouldn’t have let him near me – I don’t ‘do’ men my friends have done or almost done or, worse, have rejected – but I still would rather have known. I thought he told me everything. That’s what I’d liked about him; that’s what repelled me about him.

‘Ready?’ Jen asked.

I glanced at her, she was back in her Whistles combination.

‘Um, yeah,’ I said. ‘You know me, I’m ever-ready.’

Greg had been here about an hour and I still hadn’t brought up him trying to seduce Jen. Instead, I slammed things around the kitchen, muttering ‘bastard’ under my breath. I then graduated to standing in front of the worktop, chopping knife in one hand, lobbing evils at his lowered head as it read a paper at the dining table.

Loose-moralled bastard.

On one such evil-lobbing excursion, Greg looked up and caught me. He double-took at the knife, obviously having flashbacks to his near decapitation at the hands of Nina. I didn’t lower the knife – I was starting to understand how she felt.

‘ All right, that’s it!’ Greg said, snapping shut the paper and getting to his feet. ‘You’ve been off with me since I got here, slamming things around, muttering. What’s wrong – and don’t say nothing because we both know there is something wrong.’ He’d tried to kiss me when he’d walked in earlier, but I’d shrugged him off saying I’d start dinner. We usually ate late on a Friday because his ‘hello’ kiss would invariably end in the bedroom. The local takeaway people often delivered food to either me or Greg wrapped up in my dressing gown, postcoital and ravenous. Not tonight, though. Tonight I was cooking without his help because I wasn’t having sex with him. Not tonight. Not ever again.

I surveyed him. Him, the man I was never having sex with again. EVER. Tall, good-looking, bastard. BASTARD. I had an urge to throw the knife, right at his big pass-at-friendmaking head.

‘And put the knife down,’ he said.

I suddenly saw the ridiculousness of the situation. Him unaware that I was aware of his crime. Me unaware how terrified he was of the implement in my hand. I laughed. From the cement-like sickness that had been lining the bottom of my stomach for hours, I laughed. It was born of cement so was heavy and stony and plummeted the second it left my mouth. Even though it was one of the scariest sounds to ever come out of my mouth, I kept making it. Laughing like cement until Greg, nervously, started to laugh, his eyes fixed on the knife. We laughed like that for quite a long time, considering how humourless the sound was.

‘So, remember that time you made a pass at Jen?’ I said.

The laugh choked in his throat as his face drained of all colour and his hands started to tremble. It wasn’t a lie, then. Wasn’t something Jen had imagined, which was the hope I’d been clinging to since leaving Harvey Nics five hours ago. It’d really happened: he’d tried it on with Jen. ‘Is that what she told you?’ he asked, a tremor vibrating in his voice. I’d only ever seen him this shaken once before – the night he was almost decapitated.

‘Noooo, she didn’t tell me that, it came to me in a dream. I’m psychic, don’t you know.’

His eyes strayed to the knife. ‘It was all a misunderstanding.’

‘What, you misunderstood that you’re not supposed to make passes at your best friend’s girlfriend?’

‘She called me that time Matt went away for a month, said she wanted me to drop round her CD and video I’d borrowed. I was drunk already so I couldn’t drive and had to get a bus and train and then another bus there.’ He talked quickly, like a man talking for his life, which he was. ‘She offered me a beer, which I needed after that journey. I stayed, watched TV and drank the beer. And then she stroked my cheek, said she was trying to get dirt off my face. I thought I’d better go then, so went to kiss her goodnight as she’d asked me to and that’s when she tried to kiss me properly. I laughed it off, so did she and I left not long after that.’

I stood stock-still, replaying the story. Stories. Two stories out of one event. Two versions of the same night. Both stories were essentially the same, the returning of the CD and video. The drinking of beer. The attempted kiss. The laughing it off. But each element of similarity had a crucial difference. Who initiated the going round? Who asked for or offered the beer? Who attempted to kiss who properly? Who was laughing it off and who was gutted because their seduction attempt didn’t work?

Basically, one of them tried it on with the other and failed. One of them was lying scum who forgot about the boundaries of friendship and sex. And who, out of Jen and Greg, was the most likely to do that, eh?

‘That’s not how Jen tells it,’ I said, the knife handle growing slippy in my sweaty palm.

‘Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? She’s just moved in with Matt.’

‘And you’ve just started screwing her best mate.’

‘
What?!
No, I’ve started
going out
with her best mate, thank you. Anyway, you know that when I’ve done something like that I admit it.’

‘Do you fancy Jen?’ I asked outright. I had to know.

His eyes rested on me.

‘Look.’ I shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you did. It’s understandable, she’s bloody gorgeous. I haven’t met a man yet who doesn’t fancy her. I’d rather know now, though. Now. Not sometime down the line when, you know, we’ve been together a while and I walk in, find you two at it and you say, “It’s something I had to do because I’ve always fancied her.” That’d kill me. So, just tell me. I won’t mind. I won’t be angry.’
I’ll be that unnamed feeling beyond anger. I’ll be on that plane of emotion that’ll make anger look like someone raising an eyebrow
. ‘Honest.’

Greg’s eyes continued to rest on me in an impassive, flat stare until I finished talking. ‘I don’t fucking fancy Jen. I never have, I never will.’ His voice was low and angry. He sounded convincing, but then he would. ‘Have you got that? Or do I need to repeat it? Louder, maybe? Because I can do that.’

‘Why have you been so weird about them moving in together, then?’

He inhaled a couple of times, trying to calm himself. ‘Come sit down and I’ll tell you.’

I suppose there’s nowt to lose by listening. But I mustn’t get talked round into believing it wasn’t him
. As I moved to the dining table Greg relieved me of the knife and sat beside me.

‘So . . .?’ I asked.

‘Do you want to get married, Amber?’ he asked. Then added quickly, ‘Not to me. I’m not proposing, I’m saying, theoretically, do you want to get married?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I don’t believe in marriage. But I suspect I might.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if I want to stay with someone, marriage will probably be a compromise. Most relationships don’t survive a refused proposal. Will I want to? No. Will I do so? Probably.’

‘And what happens when you meet the person you want to marry, because there’s always someone out there who you’ll
want
to marry.’

‘Even if there was, which I’m not saying I agree there will be, I’d be married so I couldn’t do owt about it. Anyway, what’s this got to do with Matt and Jen and you avoiding them?’
Duh!
The second the words left my mouth, DUH! smacked me in the face.

‘Has Matt met someone else?’

‘Nope,’ Greg replied without acknowledging that he’d practically given me a heart attack.

‘But you think Matt doesn’t want to move in with Jen, he’s doing it to keep her happy?’

Greg paused. He always paused. And I hated Greg’s pauses. Nothing good came from a Greg-made pause. ‘Matt and Jen are Matt and Jen. I don’t want to get involved in it.’

What?
I asked silently, raising my hands and opening them questioningly. ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ I said. ‘And it certainly doesn’t explain anything.’

‘I . . .’ Greg paused, his eyes searched the air for the right words on some ethereal script he could read from. ‘Matt isn’t the person Jen thinks he is. And I’m sure you know stuff about Jen that Matt doesn’t know about. I think they’ve rushed into this. Neither of them knows what they’re doing.’

‘And we do?’

‘Our relationship is different. We started off being friends so we’ve started off being honest, haven’t we?’

Sean. Ex, Sean. Tall, blond, rugged. Strong features. ‘Fuck me quick’ smile. Can’t think why he suddenly came to mind. ‘Yup. Totally honest.’

‘Well there you go. There are things Matt and Jen need to sort out or they’ll explode right in their faces and I don’t want to be around when that detonation takes place. Aren’t you the one who’s always following the path of least resistance? Well, I’ve got a licence to drive on that road too.’

True. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was Greg’s word against Jen’s.

Jen. Best mate since first year at college; trustee of most of my secrets; newly christened cow (still bitter about the fat comment)

vs

Greg. Tart; had shagged 100 women about a year ago; kissed God knows how many; made a pass at even God probably stopped counting how many; newly established boyfriend.

Who was I meant to believe? Who did I instinctively believe?

Actually, maybe there was nobody to believe. Maybe, seeing as they were both drunk, they’d lazily gone to kiss each other’s cheeks and had bumped lips. It had happened to me before. Even with female friends. There were loads of women I’d bumped lips with and I hadn’t been trying to seduce any of them, not even the good looking ones.

That was it. Jen and Greg had nothing to hide. It was all innocent. It had to be. I didn’t want it to be anything else. If it was, then one of them had tried to seduce the other and I couldn’t . . .
wouldn’t
think through that possibility. At all.

chapter nineteen

true chocolate lover

I was doing something I hadn’t done since I’d stopped being single in the purest sense.

My secret lover would be horrified if he knew what I was about to do, what I used to do regularly before I started seeing him: I was going on a chocolate run.